Every two years, the world's leading experts in force protection descend upon the airfield at Quantico Marine Corps Base to view the latest in force-protection technology. This year, one of the stars of the show was Geocell Systems, with the Rapid Deployment Fortification Wall.

RDFW On The Blast Range

On Wednesday, we set our Rapid Deployment Fortification Wall (RDFW) 18 feet from a 50-pound TNT charge. The result? A slightly damaged wall.

The blast crushed the front of the target wall, destroying the first row of cells but leaving the rest of the wall intact. Essentially, this blast turned a 42-inch-thick wall into a 39-inch-thick wall. Other sand-filled barrier products would have simply emptied out after a hit like this.

But to demonstrate how RDFW’s modular nature allows it to sustain repeat damage, we left the wall unrepaired, to be hit by another 50 pounds of TNT on Thursday.

The result of the Thursday blast? The loss of just one more row of cells, leaving a fully functional, full-height wall now 32 inches thick.

RDFW In The Trade Show Booth

There’s nothing like getting hands-on with a product. At the Geocell Systems booth, visitors from all over the globe were able to expand and join RDFW units to see just how simple and versatile a product RDFW is firsthand.

With minimal training, a crew of six workers and an equipment operator can build 100 feet of four-foot-high wall in just one hour

RDFW walls also have the strength to carry substantial loads. Geocell has built bunkers which easily support 24 inches of overhead cover.

RDFW On The Ballistics Range

7.62mm, 5.56mm and buckshot aren’t much of a challenge for RDFW. Here at FPED V, we were hit with over 50 rounds on each of the three days of shooting, and no round ever made it past the 2nd cell of our 7-cell-thick wall. That’s less than 10 inches of penetration in a 42-inch-thick wall.

But just as important as showing that RDFW can stop bullets was demonstrating how RDFW’s modular nature isolates damage to a single column of cells. Some sand-filled barriers will open up and empty out once they become torn by hostile fire. With RDFW, you have a resilient barrier capable of sustaining repeat damage without losing integrity.

And repairsif they are even necessaryare easy. Simply slip one of our standard End Closure Insert pieces (which come in every crate of RDFW) behind your bullet holes, pour a little more sand in, and you’re done.

Expedient Road Building With RDFW

What do you do when the access to your tradeshow booth is through a mud bog? If you’ve got RDFW, you’ve got nothing to worry about!

As it happens, Geocell’s RDFW is derived from the very sand-confinement road grid technology that the military uses to build heavy-duty roads across beaches and over soft terrain. And the same sand-confinement physics still apply.

Using some standard RDFW units from our tradeshow booth, we turned a muddy bog into a trafficable road in minutes.